A 70-year-old Jewish man was beaten on a Berlin street on Tuesday in an apparent anti-Semitic attack, prompting the city’s mayor to insist such incidents must “never become normal.”

Police said Tuesday the victim was initially insulted by an unknown man as he walked in the Karow neighborhood of the German capital.

The Jewish man defended himself verbally, prompting the assailant to strike him multiple times, especially in the head and chin.

The victim stumbled and fell to the ground. The beating was only stopped when a passerby intervened and sent the attacker fleeing, according to the Bild newspaper, which cited police.

There is no immediate information on the attacker’s identity.

Berlin Mayor Michael Muller slammed the recent spate of such attacks, calling them “events that in our city, in the face of our history, just should not happen, and [must] never become normal.”

Muller said the insults that preceded the assault were anti-Semitic in nature.

The incident comes two weeks after an October 9 attack in the eastern German city of Halle that saw a suspected neo-Nazi shoot dead two people, having tried and failed to storm a packed synagogue on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur.